Best Flinders Poems
Until I've seen, Melbourne days
was not just emptiness in play
I know I'll see
What I didn't see,
the September soaked symphony
of Vivaldi vines climbing,
jacaranda booms,
tremolo spilling eaves
Until you know this suburban kid's righted the wrong
I'll verse on my way, you as the bridges in my song
Making choruses of dreams that could soon belong
And urban princes and their Porsches
Lost in winters, cold in summers
They adore to ornate you, over muskwood and glassy silvers
But can they look up to the night,
And know wonder in the sight?
In that blue-hued veiled Van Gogh I see your stars
These hardened hands carrying letters I send
will wear me down to some sorry end
And this I know
But I'll go knowing
the Chapel charade was the pretty noise
of sonnets chasing sunsets,
drunk Welsh poets
tearing tails for London wisps
Until it comes, a northern boy without southerly blues
The swaying Yarrans, sparkling flutes, Victorian flues
Keeps Flinders Station stepping full of over-priced shoes
And boney bonny dames, old money games
Skirts for winters, surgeons for gains
They climb to lower you, for fifteen lights upon their names
But can they look up to the night,
And know wonder in the sight?
In that blue-hued veiled Van Gogh I see your stars
Categories:
flinders, hope, life, lost love,
Form:
Free verse
Le Problème avec des Blancs – Translation of Jim Everett’s « The White Man Problem » by T. Wignesan
(Jim Everett, Mawbana Pleregannana, b. 1942 on Flinders Island, Tasmania, has had a chequered career and like almost all the aboriginal poets and writers in English of the first post-WWII generation, hardly made it over the primary school curricula. He’s a poet, playwright and essayist (short articles). Among the jobs he tried his hand at : telegram boy, factory hand, fisherman, merchant seaman, rigger, truck driver, public servant, aboriginal community worker and political activist. He was the national secretary of the National Aboriginal and Islander Writers Oral Literature and Dramatists Association.) T. Wignesan, Paris, December 15, 2016
Des aborigènes ayant lutté ne cessent de perdre.
L’homme blanc est venu pour répandre son fléau,
Ils ont apporté leurs droits que nous n’avons pas choisis.
Nous ne pouvons pas contrôler cette chose qui nous étouffe,
Malgré cet obstacle nous devons nous faire avancer
Et nous devons aussi rester fidèle à nos croyances dans leurs
évolution,
Dans l’espoir que l’attitude des blancs va se diminuer.
Des hommes blancs ne s’intéressent pas à comprendre nos
traditions,
Ils pensent que leur technologie est la meilleure solution pour
l’homme.
Et ils persistent à nous faire renoncer à nos coutumes ancestrales
Et leur ‘civilisation’ continue à nous nous faire soumettre.
Ils ne voient pas à quel point ils ont tort,
Etant aveuglés par la gloire et le pouvoir.
Leur pouvoir les empêche à distinguer le vrai but de la vie,
Ainsi créant le problème des hommes blancs qui nous rende
amers.
Les problèmes des blancs s’avèrent être l’avarice et le viol,
Et leurs dix commandements qu’ils désobéissent à volonté.
Pour quelle raison ont-ils des telles lois s’ils ne peuvent pas les
suivre,
C’est toujours le cas des tous les blancs.
La réponse devrait se trouver dans le fait de leur pouvoir,
Exploitant d’autres pauvres blancs sans défense parmi eux.
L’histoire de l’homme blanc se résume à : chacun pour soi-même,
Que le problème de l’homme blanc n’est guère confiné à la
couleur de sa peau.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2016.
Categories:
flinders, discrimination, power, prejudice, racism,
Form:
Quatrain
I walked down the road and through the tunnel,
To the train where we walked so many times before.
I smiled to myself remembering the past,
Then comes the sad reminder that you’re not here anymore.
I sat on the train alone this time,
Numbingly staring at where you should have taken your place.
I arrive at Flinders Station,
And start the journey of seeing the places where I should see your face.
I begin the sad and agonising journey,
Up to AC/DC Lane,
And I remember you telling me everything about it.
On your first journey over on the plane.
Through tears I take a photo of that wall,
Where you stood a few months ago in July.
Tears of sadness run like a flowing tap,
Causing concerned looks on the faces of passer-bys.
I then head up to Hardware Lane,
Where we always stopped and enjoyed a meal.
I sit at the table where we would always sit,
It’s hard to describe the heartache and pain I feel.
I’m on the train and alight at Jolimont,
The home of footy at the MCG.
I look at the photo you sent me on Grand Final day,
You looked so happy to me.
Now I. Make my walk back through the tunnel,
Without you holding my hand.
I know you are walking beside me,
Only this time you’re in the Promise Land.
Now every time I think of you,
I’m drowned by raw emotion.
My world feels like it’s completey spinning,
Forever going in slow motion.
Categories:
flinders, death, i miss you,
Form:
ABC
Droving Carolyn,
You could always come a droving,
on the stock route we'd be roving,
sleep neath the stars,
an rough it on the track.
Where the Dingoes howl at midnight,
and the Sand Goannas fight with Brown Snakes,
and the air is sweet as honey,
but there isn't any money,
and you wash in rivers,
sometimes, way outback.
Riding in a Poley saddle,
Slowing back the cattle,
To get a feed of Flinders grass so sweet,
Just a walking leading me horse,
Chomping Damper corn meat an sauce,
Yes me Quartpot boiled of course ,
An I’m drinking some black tea,
Not too bloody sugary.
The trucking yards are waiting,
Two days away, let em go,
in the long paddock tonight,…(stock route)
Tomorrow we will muster,
watch the brown horse, watch him buster,
or he’ll drop you in the long grass,
and you won’t bloody like?
Don Johnson 19-june-11
Categories:
flinders, adventureme,
Form:
Rhyme
A track leads through a gully in the bushland
Following the least line of resistance in a haphazard plan
The kookaburras and the magpies squawk happily away
The sun on my back makes me want to stay
Walking to the rock face broken on the gorge face
Two wallabies look our way and away they race
A creek flows through glistening in the sun
The day exploring is heaven easily done.
© Paul Warren Poetry
Categories:
flinders, nature,
Form:
Ballad
Toy’s abattoir has decayed.
Gone is the bank, E.S. & A.
One time Witton Street brickwork’s,
is grass growing over the clay.
Bruton the blacksmith has rusted.
His name on a shed disappears.
The water trough in Mackey Street,
has not seen a horse in years.
I s’pose this is meant to be progress,
tearing this village apart,
so the old folk, keep telling me,
history lives inside their heart.
The Flinders Road bakery has gone.
Maisey the butcher has too.
Eacott motors remembered by concrete,
on a block in Princes Avenue.
The produce of Follett and Pope,
along with the vital Wenns store.
The banks, green grocer and plumber,
don’t open their doors any more.
I s’pose this is meant to be progress,
tearing this village apart,
so the old folk, keep telling me,
history lives inside their heart.
The shrine to our heroes at war;
relocated and out of the way.
Ed’s milk bar where we gathered;
ivy covers the rubble today.
Idle is the old butter factory,
at one time the hub of this town.
Four timber mills once flourished.
Three of them now have closed down.
I s’pose this is meant to be progress,
tearing this village apart -
once held in the old pioneer hands,
who gave this village a start.
Some of them say they remember,
days of the old horse and cart,
so the old folk keep telling me,
history lives inside their heart.
Categories:
flinders, history,
Form:
Lyric
Scott Morrision says the USA had slaves, Australia did not
The Aborigines may disagree, and women in the church, along with boys
WE heard the scandal (Maybe sex slavery is really FREE!)
Now, I know something else, those Queensland sugar plantations
Deep in what HUGH TINKER (no Indian) called "New Slavery" since 1838!
Once Britain showed great heart to abolish slavery, keep plantations
To be worked by the "surplus" in India! It made Mahtama Gandhi mad
That great nations use one race against another - always - divide & rule
"To make the abolition and emancipation of slaves real" with new slaves
Using words creativity (not more democracy), Creative TREACHERY:
Hugh Tinker's book by this name called indented labor, "New System of Slavery"
NOTE: I had a strange deal at Flinders University to teach this subject: Indentured Labor and British Plantations, but i took too long at Johns Hopkins University getting my PhD for Dr. Ralph Shlomowitz. In part, due to racism I suffered there at the hands of a famous Philip Curtin. I won, thanX Jesus!
Categories:
flinders, africa, america, political, power,
Form:
Free verse
With compass and sextant, paper and ink,
Bungaree, Nanbaree, Matthew and George
and a cat and a crew were at sea.
They went sailing and sailing, around and around
in Eighteen Hundred and Three.
The Investigator’s navigator calculated space
by meridians and parallels to draw Australia’s place.
With Tasmania as an island, and Bass Strait in between,
he mapped the coastal outlines with ink like lines of lace.
On an island east of Africa, where dodos used to roam,
he wrote a book, and drew more maps, in prison, far from home.
He’d travelled as a scientist; he’d met Frenchman, Baudin,
but, here to mend a leaking boat, they would not let him go.
The governor of the Isle de France let pirates prowl the sea,
but arrested Matthew Flinders as a spy and enemy.
Around Good Hope, after the siege -
from Mauritius, now British (not French),
back to London, sailed Matthew Flinders,
not knowing his days were brief.
Map-maker, map-maker, making a map,
right ’round Australia, and finally back.
Map-maker, map-maker, thanks for the book,
of Terra Australis and the journeys you took.
Categories:
flinders, history, sea,
Form:
Rhyme
All is burning, cinders and ash
flakes float in black rain,
falling on a ground
of clinkers and flinders.
The hand of ruin traces sigils
of chaos and strife
on broken city walls,
within which rats awaken
They are the true rulers of destruction,
living cloaked with shadows,
in any crevice or crack,
hunting bones and burnt flesh.
Their rivals, jet-black birds,
massing on heights above
in their murders
and raucous unkindness'.
After Ragnarök, the still silence
is broken by the raspy flutter
of a million wings,
echoed chittering of uncountable hordes.
What life is left
does not weep.
Categories:
flinders, surreal,
Form:
Free verse